I recently contacted TruGreen - a lawn care company - to see if they could make my yard look better. I was subjected to some high-pressure sales tactics in an attempt to sell me not just comprehensive lawn care, but also shrub care. The sales pressure made me uncomfortable, but FWIW, they do seem to make my neighbor’s yard look damn good.
Last night I searched the web a bit and found a lot of complaints about them, mostly with regard to billing and difficulty in cancelling their service. I’m taking it with a (small) grain of salt, because people don’t tend to post positive business experiences; IOW, the internet has a negative reporting bias.
Having said that, I’m curious to hear anyone’s experience here, good or bad. Did you hire TruGreen to take care of your lawn? How’s your grass look? How’s your wallet look? Do you feel like you got a good deal and that they treated you well, or do you wish them ill?
It’s a maintenance business. They work on the principle of upcharging customers for additional services. “Well, you have a few leaves chewed here… we can spray the yard for $165”. “Thatch is getting thick here and you know that’ll choke your grass. we can dethatch for $130 next time we’re out.”, etc. You’ll never hear that your lawn looks great and your plants look great and you’re all set. So expect to keep hearing those high-pressure sales tactics because they don’t make their living just mowing lawns. If you avoid any unnecessary services, it might be worth it. The problem is knowing which services aren’t needed.
I’ve never had an account with TruGreen but this is based on knowing people who have, working in a company that has a landscape maintenance division so I know how important upcharging is the the bottom line (although we do it more with “Well, this house sure would look nice with some fall mums…”) and years experience in the landscape retail business where I’d constantly get people coming in holding a benign insect or easily treatable fungus issue and saying “The TruGreen/Chemlawn guy says I need a special treatment for this.”
I used them one year, when I’d moved into a new house that had a weedy yard.
At one point during that summer I had two different guys giving my lawn double treatments. I had to fuss about that and demand a refund.
Then the next summer, when I hadn’t signed any kind of re-up contract, a guy just showed up, did a treatment, and wanted $50. They were really obnoxious about not wanting to refund that one.
You really need to supervise them (they always screw up my lot line) but I’ve found them responsive to my requests to fix things.
Their calls to renew (even though I said no multiple times) and expand services (even though I’ve told them never to call me about that again) are a pain … but I’ve come to enjoy getting rude with them when they deserve it.
I’ve found them willing to cut their price more than once when I threatened to quit them.
I’ll second the high-pressure line of bull. They told me what they do and asked for me to approve them coming to service my yard. I said no thanks. They said, sir, this is a neighborhood initiative, the whole neighborhood is required to participate. Ex-fucking-scuse me? You’re calling to ask but I don’t have any choice? Also, I don’t remember any of my neighbors taking a vote on you calling around to hard sell me and take my money. We don’t even have a homeowner’s association. Lady, I’m broke; who do you think you are to bully me about how I spend my money?
Needless to say, didn’t get their service. Just just as justice in secret can never be justice, business sold like this is seldom good business for you.
I’ve used them for the last couple of years (I used to use a company called ChemLawn, and then TrueGreen bought them out along with my contract).
They do make your lawn look good, and if that’s all they did that would be great.
But then two years ago they talked my wife into adding tree/shrub treatments that don’t seem to do any good at all. Then last year they added two extra treatments to the tree/shrub maintenance that they claimed (but I don’t remember) that I’d agreed to (When the first one occurred I called up about it, agreed to pay for it, but canceled the second one).
Now I’m trying to cancel the contract, but nobody’s answering the phone (which makes sense, really - it’s not like they’re doing a whole lot of lawn/shrub work in Pennsylvania in December).
They are now tied in with Scotts Lawn Care products, and sometimes you’ll see them dashing around a lawn with a broadcast spreader instead of a hose.
Some 20 years ago, I cut them off after their man killed off a long line of coreopsis and peonies along my back fence. I knew I could trust myself with a spreader more than I can trust them. In the last few years, Mike McGrath has persuaded me to abandon all that chemical mayhem. Lawn grass, cut short, is an unnatural thing. It works better when I mow at the highest setting, and I don’t waste time watering and fertilizing. In a drought, brown is natural. My mower chops the clippings fine, and it leaves it on the lawn where it can do some good.
I used their service for a few years and had the same experiences with the sales pitches. There is always something more that your yard needs, even when everything looks fine. I downgraded to the minimum service and it didn’t look any different from when I was paying for all the extras that I “needed”.
My only interaction with them was back when they had just become TruGreen (instead of ChemLawn). I was working as one of those annoying hippie kids who knocks on your door asking for donations to [name your state]PIRG. That year, we were focusing on residential pesticide use. TruGreen dude was at one of the houses I showed up at, and started ranting about their product being “as safe as drinking water.” He declined to demonstrate it’s drinkability.
Do be sure to take into account pets/kids/neighbors if you have them spraying. Insecticides and herbicides are meant to kill things, after all. If I were in the middle of grilling in my lawn next to your house and someone started misting poison into the air, I’d be a bit annoyed.
Oh yeah. I still shudder when I think of the three years I wasted with TruGreen/Chemlawn. They didn’t do what they said they’d do, didn’t show up when they said they’d be there, conveniently were only available when we weren’t home, and over the course of three years, my once very nice lawn went slowly, then quickly to crap. After countless calls and countless excuses, I’d finally had enough and left a message to cancel whatever the heck it was they were doing (for all I know they could have been dumping acid on my lawn…or absolutely nothing at all, which is what I actually believe). Only then did they call me back, but to threaten to send my, get this, upcoming bills, meaning work they hadn’t even scheduled to perform yet, to a collections agency for payment. I contacted the BBB and they had a list of complaints a mile long, and I filed another one. I never heard from TruGreen/Chemlawn again.
My advice is to run very far, and very fast, away from TruGreen/Chemlawn.
On neighbor uses them. The whole damn neighborhood stinks for days and birds die. A “world’s worst birdcatcher” of a cat of mine showed up with a bird in his mouth a day after “the toxic cloud” was unleashed is how I know their crap kills birds.
Sometimes they put up little signs that you have to get right down to ground level to read telling you to keep kids & pets off for 24 hrs. Naturally, the signs aren’t dated.